BHP Billiton announced this week that CEO Marius Kloppers will step down in May and will be succeeded by Andrew Mackenzie, the current head of the company’s non-ferrous division, who worked for BP for 22 years and who worked for Rio Tinto prior to joining BHP Billiton.

BHPB’s appointment of a chief executive with extensive experience in the oil and gas business signals a further shift of focus from mining to natural resource extraction in general. Given the importance of cost control in the coming years, and considering the company’s asset base in oil and gas and the limited understanding of the oil and gas industry by most miners, appointing an insider with good knowledge of the full range of assets is a logical choice.

The increase of iron ore prices is expected to be a relatively short-term development driven by weather expectations and the annual cyclical demand of Chinese importers. which peaks in Q4 and Q1. Long-term price expectations are still much below the current level as additional production capacity is being added at a high pace.

The latest update of the M&A share attractiveness ranking for the world’s 40 largest mining companies demonstrates the current slump of gold (and to lesser extent copper) mining stocks. Discounting Ivanhoe, which has been taken out by Rio Tinto, ENRC tops the list of companies that might become the target of an acquisition. The company’s stock moved higher over the past weeks on acquisition rumors, reducing its attractiveness ranking, but analysts still see approximately 50% upside in the stock. Behind ENRC the ranking is dominated by gold and copper miners, with Anglo American the only non gold or copper miner in the top 10. Low gold and copper prices and the emergence of gold ETFs has depressed the share price of the miners over the past year, but most analysts still expect better times for this group of miners.

The thebusinessofmining.com M&A share attractiveness ranking is a combination of analyst expectations and current share level compared to the annual high, normalized against BHP’s share performance. The ranking provides a market perspective of how ‘cheap’ a stock is for potential acquirers.

Anglo announces mine closures resulting in thousands of job losses in its South African operations. In response the president threatened to review Anglo’s mining licenses, trying to force the company to keep the mines open. Mark Cutifani, Anglo’s new CEO, reacted with fierce criticism of the government’s attitude.

Mining companies in South Africa see a shift of union membership from the moderate NUM to the more radical Amcu, leading up to further wage negotiations this year.

Vale’s $6bln Rio Colorado potash project in the Mendoza project of Argentina is rumored to be delayed by up to 3 years, mainly driven by large rail investments. Vale announced it is reviewing the project economics and has therefore extended the holiday of the workers, but the company denies the project has been suspended.

The governor of the province told media that Vale has asked for delay of a sales tax implementation from construction to extraction phase, and argues that this would imply a tax break of $1.5-2.0bln. He also stressed that the government will make sure the project moves forward irrespective of Vale’s plans.

The business environment for mining in South Africa remains very unstable. Not only the government’s ambition to get as much revenue out of mining as possible, resulting in top decile effective taxes, but also the radical approach of unions fighting to increase membership levels, create a situation in which long-term planning for any mining company in the country is almost impossible.

The business environment in Argentina has deteriorated quickly and appears to move into the direction of nationalization of business quickly. The government tries to get projects going in an attempt to stimulate the economy, but at the same time makes it impossible for companies to repatriate profits from those projects in an attempt to limit inflation. As a result there is no incentive for any foreign company to invest in the country for any short to mid-term gains. In the Rio Colorado case: A delay of the effect of sales tax to the extraction phase is unlikely to reduce tax paid by Vale by $1.5bln, as the company only starts selling its product in large quantities in that extraction phase.

Caterpillar’s machinery sales declined 1% over the past 3 months, driven by poor results in AsiaPacific and North America.

The news of the mining slowdown hitting the top equipment manufacturer comes at the same time as the announcement of structural over reporting of profits at ERA Mining Machinery, the Chinese manufacturer bought for approx. $700m last year.

The only two directors on Bumi’s board who Nathan Rothschild wanted to stay in function have sided with the rest of the board in the support for the plan to have the Bakrie family buy the Bumi Resources assets and separate from Bumi, which would be left with the Berau assets.

Rothschild and Bakrie have been in a dispute about the future of the London-listed miner with coal assets in Indonesia for several months. The company said this week that the decisions about the future structure of the group will not be impeded by the ongoing legal probe into financial practices at their assets.

The reduction of machinery sales at Caterpillar signals that the peak of new project development has passed. While miners raced to add capacity over the past years, many new projects are now put on hold or downsized. Although Caterpillar can expect to benefit from the forecasted rise increase of global resource requirements over the next decades, the fastest growth is over. Equipment manufacturers are a good indicator of overall growth outlook in the industry as their sales is directly linked to building of production capacity.

Bumi’s future appears to be that of an Asian-focused coal company without strong Indonesian shareholders. The tie-up of the Vallar cash shell with powerful Indonesian miners did create a significant player in the region, but the divergent views on corporate governance between the Indonesian and European-based owners has made it impossible to run the company effectively.

Anglo announced the appointment of Mark Cutifani, CEO or AngloGold, as the new CEO, replacing Cynthia Carroll in April. The departure of Mrs. Carroll had been announced some time ago.

Mr. Cutifani has been heading AngloGold since 2007, working as COO of Inco before that. He is an Australian nation, but has extensive experience in South Africa, which should help Anglo to both manage the important government relations in South Africa and become less dependent on the country.

Rio Tinto announced the sudden replacement of CEO Tom Albanese by Sam Walsh, who had been heading the company’s iron ore group since 2004. Albanese and Doug Ritchie, the head of the coal group, stepped down because of write-downs of $14bn on acquisitions, including $10-11bn on the acquisition of Alcan in 2008, and $3bn on recent coal acquisitions in Mozambique.

With the departure of Albanese as CEO of Rio Tinto, each of the top 5 diversified miners has a replacement of CEO in a timeframe of 2 years. Only BHP Billiton has not yet announced who the new CEO will be. The previous group of CEOs started their jobs during the high-growth period in which the size of their companies grew exponentially, and then had to lead the same companies through the global financial crisis and debt crisis. The new chief executives will have to manage the performance of their companies in a period of lower growth and potentially more stability in terms of asset base and outlook.

Anglo American and Cliffs Natural Resources sell their 70% and 30% stakes in the Northern Brazilian Amapa iron ore mine to private miner Zamin Ferrous for approx. $400m. A year after buying their 70% share 4 years ago, Anglo took a $1.5bn writedown on the asset.

Bumi Resources, partly owned by Bumi plc and part of the dispute between the Bakri family and Nath Rotschild about the future of Bumi, posted a loss over the first 9 months of 2012 driven by low coal prices and a loss of over $400m on derivatives.

The loss on derivatives value was driven by a re-calculation of early payment rights, changing the discount rate of the value of that option from 5.25% to 17.2%.

The sale of iron ore mines or stakes by ArcelorMittal and AngloAmerican signal 2 different trends in the industry:

The large miners are actively divesting non-core assets, trying to focus management attention and funding on the large operations and development projects.

Many companies are having trouble securing the funds required to execute the enormous development projects that are currently in execution phase in the iron ore industry. Forming partnerships and selling minority stakes is often the cheapest way to obtain funding.

The loss reported by Bumi Resouces is not a sign of mismanagement, but rather a sign of cleaning up the books and trying to make sure the assets listed are actually worth what they are listed for. Valuation of options is a highly subjective art, and the management of Bumi Resources apparently chose to take the revaluation hit at a moment when low coal prices were forces the results into the red anyway.